


bury me, marry me to the sky

by renjutori



Category: Feel Special - TWICE (Music Video), TWICE (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Dimension Travel, F/F, Yuletide 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renjutori/pseuds/renjutori
Summary: Sometimes Sana thinks that she's just cursed. Other times, mostly when Dahyun smiles at her, she thinks that maybe there's some magic in her life after all.
Relationships: Kim Dahyun/Minatozaki Sana
Comments: 13
Kudos: 49
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	bury me, marry me to the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Biscuit Lion (cookiethelion)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookiethelion/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Hope you enjoy and have a wonderful Winter. This was a pleasure to write!
> 
> (PSA: in this fic TWICE stands for Travelling Women of Interdimensional Cooperation and Enterprise. not really, but actually yes)

The rain has been falling for four days straight when Dahyun pops up in Sana’s universe again. It happens just after the sun has dipped below the horizon and the water for her bedtime cup of tea has begun to boil.

“Give me a minute,” Sana calls, in response to the knock on the door. A second later, it swings open anyway and a familiar face comes into view. 

“Why is your door always unlocked? That’s so unsafe.”

“You couldn’t wait a minute?” Sana asks drily, but she’s holding back a smile. Dahyun shakes her wet hair out of her face and grins, and that’s the only answer she gets. “Do you want a towel? You’re soaked.”

Dahyun flips a hand impassively. “Occupational hazard,” she says, all the while shucking off her shoes. “On second thought, maybe just to sit on. So I don’t get your furniture wet.”

Sana tosses her one of the dishcloths she keeps solely for this purpose. “Do you want some tea?”

“No,” Dahyun wrinkles her nose. “It’s too hot right now. It’s summer where I just came from.”

“Lucky.” She rips open the teabag and tosses it into her mug. Her grandmother taught her to always pour half of the hot water into the cup before adding the tea, and then to dump it out. So the cup itself keeps the tea warm, she had told her. Today is a half-assed kind of day, as usual, and so Sana skips that step. Sometimes, for special occasions, she does it. But only special ones.

Dahyun shrugs. “I’d take you with me if I could. I don’t think you’d like where I just came from though, that world’s very tropical. Humid. It rains a lot, and I know you hate the cold and wet.” She carefully arranges the dishcloth onto the couch, then flops down on top of it. “There’s one universe where it’s springtime all year round though, and there’s meteor showers every night.”

“Sounds pretty,” Sana says as she sits down. She takes a sip of her tea. If she focuses on the flavor of it, she won’t think about how she’s the only one of her friends who will never be able to see any of that. 

“I don’t know. I’ve seen prettier things.” 

“Like what?” The tea is too bitter. She should have added some sugar. She drinks the rest anyway in one gulp.

Dahyun just smiles.

——

The summer before Sana started high school, her grandmother took her to the bookstore owned by Park Jihyo’s mother. “What I’m about to show you,” she told her as they slowly ascended the winding staircase in the dusty back room. “You must never repeat to anyone outside this circle.”

Sana had known since she was a child that her grandmother had two different kinds of friends. There were the ones she passed in the streets and saw around their apartment building, who smiled and waved at her and were occasionally invited over. And then there were the ones who were different; most of them came and went from her family’s apartment frequently, appearing out of the blue as if they owned keys of their own—they didn’t, and Sana knew this because her father had misplaced the spare years ago and the only locksmith in their area of town had moved around the same time—and constantly talking in hushed voices with her relatives. Those were the ones who she always saw when her grandmother would let her come along to her weekly book club meetings. Sana was never allowed to actually come to the meetings, but she would sit at the stool behind the counter and play with Jihyo and the other girls while their mothers and various other women disappeared into the back room.

Sana, Jihyo, and Im Nayeon, and sometimes Myoui Mina when she joined in on their games instead of reading, used to guess at what was in there. Sana thought it was unicorns, but Jihyo thought it was probably demons or they wouldn’t be so secretive (who would want to hide a unicorn?). Mina shrugged and said it was probably some magic artifact. Nayeon was convinced it was a black hole after going to a month long science camp one summer. 

Nayeon, as it turned out, came the closest. The Park family bookstore housed one of the only dimensional rifts in the Korean Peninsula. Magic had been legal for a century now, but the practitioner community was more fractured than cohesive, and so this window to other worlds was a tightly guarded secret among the few families in charge of its caretaking. Officially, their families specialized in sensing the unique frequencies between worlds, but not actually traversing them. Dimension hopping was tricky, and also, frowned upon legally.

When Sana and the other daughters of the book club members progressed enough in their lessons on inter-dimensional travel, they were introduced to the members of caretaker families from other dimensions; usually girls a little older than them who were further ahead in training, like Jeongyeon, who was actually royalty in her dimension, and Momo, who seemed aloof but warmed up quickly. Then they were taught how to use the portal, first in theory, and then in actuality. And eventually, all of them succeeded—except for Sana.

——

“Sometimes the magic skips a generation or two, you know,” Her grandmother had told her then. “It’s a heavy burden to bear but it will become easier with time.” It almost made her feel better.

At first, she tried to find other specialties she could take up, to distract herself from the talent she so sorely lacked. Healing magic, maybe, or elemental. None of it stuck. Trying to call on those types of magics felt like pulling at empty air. After two years of searching, she was forced to accept the truth that had been hanging over her head ever since she’d walked out of the bookstore: Minatozaki Sana had been born almost entirely normal.

She could do little things at least: nudge an object with her mind, coax plants to bloom faster. Sometimes she could even sense when it was going to rain. But that wouldn’t become important until later.

——

When Sana was sixteen, she met Kim Dahyun for the first time. Dahyun had started training with the other girls, after Sana had already failed out. It was New Year’s Eve, and her grandmother had dragged her to the celebration at the bookstore, refusing to let her sulk and avoid her friends for more than the six months that she had already been doing it. Jihyo and Nayeon had hugged her, and immediately dragged her over to meet the newcomer.

“I like your shoes,” Dahyun had said. “Let’s be friends.” 

“Okay,” Sana said, not really meaning it at the time. It wasn’t anything against Dahyun; Dahyun was pretty, she was nice, and more than that, she didn’t need portals to travel. She could travel with the rain. She was cool. And that was the problem, because Sana couldn’t even do most magic. She was jealous. But if Minatozaki Sana was going to be boring and untalented and petty, she refused to add rude to the list. 

So she let Dahyun pretend they were friends. She talked to her at the group gatherings the other girls dragged her to, even though she was the only one there not in training. She got ice cream with her in the summer at the store around the corner. She laughed at her jokes. 

And somewhere along the line, it stopped being pretend. She started laughing for real and looking forward to seeing her. Maybe she couldn’t ever outrun the shame she felt for being the odd one out of all her family and friends, but she didn’t have to let it get in the way of being happy. She could build a life for herself, an identity separate from what the Minatozaki name meant, even if it was a boring one.

One day, Dahyun’s hair fell across her face in the sun and Sana’s breath caught, and she finally admitted to herself that maybe it wasn’t friendship she wanted.

Even before then, she had fascinated Sana. The way her eyes creased when she smiled, the frantic energy that possessed her when she danced to the songs they’d sing along to on the radio when they were supposed to be sleeping. But also; the quiet calm she had to her in mornings and evenings, the two sides to her that would be opposing in anyone else, but formed a harmony in her.

——

The current generation of caretakers, all nine of them, tries to meet up at least once a month. Not always for lunch or dinner, since planning meals can be tricky when factoring in different time rates, but always at Sana’s place. As the only non-traveling member, it’s easier for her to host. It also conveniently takes care of the fact that if they had the meeting in a different dimension, Sana wouldn’t be able to go.

Beyond the monthly get together, Sana tries to meet up with Momo fairly often. Being able to speak Japanese somewhere other than just her home is comforting; she loves Korean, even the nuances that she stumbled over in the early days when her family first moved, but Japanese feels like breathing to her.

Today, they meet up at a small café in Hongdae. Mina usually comes as well, but lately she’s been busy. 

“I think she’s been spending a lot of time in Chaeyoung’s world,” Momo says, stirring her coffee. “I miss her.”

“It makes sense,” Sana shrugs. “They got pretty close after Mina helped her study for her practitioner exam.” Chaeyoung also still has a cut-off for the amount of hours she’s allowed to travel between dimensions, so Mina usually goes to her.

“I know, but still. We’re all older now, and it’s natural to drift apart now that we’re not forced together all the time in training, but it feels strange not to see you all every day.” Momo’s lips turn down at the corners as she stares out the window at passing cars.

“Me too,” Sana admits. “I barely get to see any of you.”

Momo looks back at her. “Once a month isn’t enough for you?” She teases.

“Individually, I mean. You guys all hang out one on one a lot, but most times I just see everyone together. It’s hard to catch up with each of you when we’re all talking at each other. I barely get to see Tzuyu or Jeongyeon these days.” She stabs at the ice cream she ordered frustratedly.

“No one sees Jeongyeon,” Momo points out, “she’s too busy ruling an entire planet. Ugh I wish my universe had interstellar travel.”

“You all visit her a lot though, since it’s hard for her to leave. I don’t get to do that.” Sana puts her spoon down, appetite lost.

Momo’s eyes soften. “I know. It sucks. And I wish I could do something to help. I’m sorry.”

Sana shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. You guys visit me a lot, I shouldn’t complain. Dahyun even visited me the other day.”

“Hey,” Momo puts a hand on her arm. “It’s okay to want more. Just ask.”

Sana wishes that were true.

——

Seasons pass. One spring, Dahyun convinces her to dye their hair together. “It’ll be fun,” she says, tossing the box to Sana, because in typical Dahyun fashion, she’s already bought it. 

Sana shakes her head in amusement. “I don’t think I’ll look good blonde.” Girls like Dahyun can go blonde and people will think it looks cool, because they are cool. Girls like Dahyun can jump dimensions at the flick of their wrist, travel through the migrating rain. Girls like Sana dye their hair blonde, and people think they’re doing it because they want to prove they’re not boring. The truth is, no amount of dye will make Sana anything more than she already is. 

“Then you dye it back! Easy!” Dahyun is having none of her argument. “ Come on, I’m going to be busy in university and I won’t be able to travel nearly as much, if at all. It can be a going away gift before we part ways forever!” She clutches at her chest dramatically.

“It better not be forever. And then that means I went through seven rounds of bleach for no reason.”

Dahyun throws an arm around her neck. “Stop worrying. You won’t need to dye it back.” Like with most of Dahyun’s bad ideas, Sana eventually gives in. 

“Fine.”

When it’s done, Sana doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror. But it looks nice. Different. 

Dahyun twirls one of Sana’s hairs, entwining it with one of her own. “Something to remember me by. See? Now we match.”

Sana smiles. “As long as it’s with you.” Dahyun’s hair smells like rain.

——

After Dahyun leaves, it’s almost like the universe knows she’s gone. The largest drought the city has seen in years hits suddenly. The heat is unbearable for everyone, but Sana feels it deep in her chest, a reminder of what she’s missing.

She passes the time tending to the plants on her balcony. It’s fortunate that she has a taste for succulents and cacti; they’ll survive the next few months. They don’t need much rain to live. Maybe she’s always been attracted to things that are the opposite of her.

——

It’s a Tuesday when the drought finally breaks. Sana has been sensing it for weeks now, a tightness in her chest, a tingling in the backs of her fingers. When the sky opens up over the city, she’s already standing outside, looking up at the sea of grey.

She’s drenched within minutes, but it feels comforting. Like she’s been asleep all her life and is finally awake. Eventually though, she gets cold enough to retreat to the overhang and slide down to sit on the ground. The wall against her back is steadying. For what feels like forever, she watches the people walking by.

She almost misses it at first because she’s too focused on watching someone’s cute dog, but she catches it in the corner of her eye: a familiar splash of now-blonde hair.

Kim Dahyun walks toward her, smiling. She’s carrying an umbrella, a rare sight. “Do you need a towel? You're soaked.”

“No,” Sana says. She stretches out her legs, clambers to her feet. It feels like taking flight. “I like the rain.”

——

_fin_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of} bury me, marry me to the sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28489878) by [the24thkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the24thkey/pseuds/the24thkey)




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